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The hypocrisy of independent Jewish voices

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Diane Weber Bederman
Diane Weber Bederman is a multi-faith, hospital trained chaplain who lives in Ontario, Canada, just outside Toronto; She has a
… [More]background in science and the humanities and writes about religion in the public square and mental illness on her blog: The Middle Ground:The Agora of the 21st Century. She is a regular contributor to Convivium: Faith in our Community.
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I entered into a dialogue with Independent Jewish Voices Canada(IJV) over their statement that Israel is an apartheid state. I sent them a link to my blog about the myth of apartheid in Israel and they returned.

They also wrote: “Your article doesn’t further the conversation or offer anything insightful to our supporters. All it does is distract from the real issue, which is Israel’s regime of domination over the Palestinian people (Israel is not a democracy, and to believe that discredits you enormously in the eyes of everyone who supports IJV on this page)”-emphasis mine.

IJV, Independent Jewish Voices are “independent” alright: they’re independent of facts. Like so many on the hard-left their ideology is based on the magical nature of understanding reality. It’s a house of cards built on a foundation of sand.

They have no problem defending the right of Palestinians in the Palestinian Territories to be Muslim in a Muslim state-like the other 15 Muslim states in the Middle East. And like the other Muslim states it’s to be Judenrein. But I don’t hear them demanding the right of the Jewish people to a Jewish state. I asked them: “Does Israel, whatever its boundaries have the right to exist as a national homeland of the Jewish people?” No answer.

Do they listen to themselves?

In the 21st century, these Jewish “Voices” which are really one voice, say it’s okay to recognize a new state in the world that will be declared free of Jews. This after we survived an attempt by the Nazis to rid the world of all Jews. And they declare this in the Middle East where the countries that exist are already Judenrein-either through expulsion of the Jews in 1948 when the Arab world declared war on Israel, or free of Jews because the Jewish community ransomed them from places like Syria through the efforts of people like Judy Feld Carr.

Forget Independent Jewish Voices, there are many moral relativists who say, today, that it’s okay for another Muslim state but it’s offensive to have one Jewish state in the world. They’re a fifth column feeding into Pan-Arabia. To paraphrase a dear friend: “If hypocrisy had a smell we’d all need gas masks.”

How does IJV support its declaration that Israel is not a democracy? If Israel isn’t a democracy, what’s their definition? The people of Israel brought the seeds of democracy out of the desert and gave it to the world through ethical monotheism. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where all religions and ethnicities are represented in their parliament, elections take place regularly, coalitions are made to form a government. The parliamentary system in Israel is one that many in Canada are requesting-representation by population.

Do they prefer instead the “democracies” in Egypt, Syria, Gaza, the Palestinian territories? How about Iran? As they accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians does it not cross their minds that ethnic cleansing means removing people completely from an area-like the Muslim countries ethnically cleansed themselves of Jews; or murdering them so that their numbers drop precipitously like the loss of Jews in the Holocaust or the massacre of the Tutsis by the Hutus?

They regurgitate left wing fundamentalism about standing in solidarity with the “Palestinian struggle for liberation from racist and colonial policies,” imbuing into the Middle East the narratives of natives, in places like Canada, who dealt with the arrival of white British explorers and later immigrants who brought their beliefs into those countries and often killed the native population.

This is not in any way the story of the people who live in the Palestinian territories. The British (white) came after the Ottomans (Turks) and overlaid their practices. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the chief of the “downtrodden non-white victims” was so enthralled with the Nazis-Aryan white people-that he went to the foot of the master colonizer, Hitler, and then established his own Muslim SS units to fight with the Nazis in support of the Final Solution.

The IJV want us to believe that the Arabs living in Judea and Samaria have been colonized, by Jewish racists.

I sometimes think it is in our best interests to let them babble away, spew their pernicious propaganda and self-destruct from their fantasy nareshkeit. In the meantime, I want to sit by the river Babylon and weep.

What have we done? In teaching to care for the other-the most revolutionary teaching to come into the world since the caveman discovered fire-did we forget to teach the importance of caring for ourselves, too. Have we forgotten Rabbi Hillel’s teachings:

“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”

IJV wrote they would “not be distracted by dishonest commentators like yourself. This correspondence is over with from our perspective.” Door closed!

The same things can be said of Jewish Voice for Peace. Closed to comments that are fact based because the facts go against their hatred.

I leave you with this question. How are we to engage with Jewish organizations that hate Jews? Not only hate Jews, but deny the basic fact that Israel is a democracy. Sending facts doesn’t appear to work. My facts were dismissed as “dishonest.” Whether my facts were correct or not-to this group it’s all rhetoric unless you agree.

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